When it comes to leading a team, I try to keep things simple. It’s not about finding some complex management hack. It’s about building an environment where people can actually do their best work and feel valued and seen.
Trust is Non-Negotiable
I don’t believe in micromanaging, full stop. If I hired you, it’s because I trust you to handle the job. My time is better spent clearing roadblocks for you (like sitting in hours of meetings), not watching over your shoulder.
Constant supervision just slows everyone down and makes people feel anxious. We hire smart people (and if we didn’t, it’s on me as a hiring manager). We need to let them use their intelligence and get the job done autonomously. Of course you should define reasonable goals and expectation, as well as KPIs and revisit regularly and in retrospectives, in order to keep things on track and learn and improve.
Creating the Right Vibe
The atmosphere in a team is everything. I want people to feel good about coming to work, and that requires two main things: support and balance.
-
Be a supportive place: We need an inclusive environment where everyone feels comfortable contributing and knows their voice is heard.
-
Respect personal lives: Work can’t constantly overshadow life outside of work. If we ignore people’s need for balance, their focus and energy for the job will eventually disappear.
When people feel genuinely supported and safe, they show up fully engaged.
Processes Need Team Buy-in
People spend too much time arguing over which exact processes, what agile framework, whatever. I don’t force processes from above. Instead, we explore and define the needed processes and ceremonies together and incrementally. This, in itself, is a process of learning and refining.
This collaborative approach is important because it ensures buy-in. If the team helped design the process, they are invested in making it work. And that buy-in isn’t just internal; it needs to extend to our external partners and stakeholders, too.
Sharing Responsibility Makes Us Stronger
I strongly believe in spreading knowledge and responsibility, not keeping them centralized. A leader trying to hold onto all the critical tasks just creates a bottleneck and prevents the team from growing.
I focus heavily on mentoring and making sure information flows freely across the team. By sharing responsibilities, we achieve a couple of things:
-
We increase the team’s overall capability.
-
We make the entire operation more robust and less reliant on any single person.
Ultimately, my job is to enable the team, not control it. When you empower people and give them ownership, they become excited contributors to shared success.
